Two Harvard professors writing in the online journal JAMA have estimated that Trump administration proposed changes on environmental regulations could result in the deaths of more than 80,000 U.S. residents per decade and cause respiratory problems for well above 1 million people.

David Cutler, an economics professor and member of the Institute of Medicine, and Francesca Dominici, a professor of biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and codirector of the Harvard Data Science Initiative, write that this impact is a "conservative estimate" and one that represents "only a small fraction of the cumulative public health damages" tied to the administration's proposed "full range of rollbacks and systemic actions."

The fact that the Trump administration has come to rely very little on input from scientists has been widely covered in the media, and Scott Pruitt, whom President Trump picked to head the Environmental Protection Agency in 2016, fought many of the EPA's regulations when he served as Oklahoma's attorney general.

The JAMA article looks at proposed changes to the country's environmental policies or ones under discussion and their possible effects.

The effect of the repeal of the Clean Power Plan rule effect on air quality it estimates could result in the deaths of 36,000 people over a decade and cause 630,000 cases of respiratory ailments in children over that time.

The Obama era signature legislation set goals for states to limit emissions from existing power plants, leaving them authority to determine how best to reach their goals.

Possible rollbacks in Obama administration emission standards for automobiles it says could result in the deaths of 5,500 over a decade due to increases in exposure to small atmospheric particular matter and ozone and an estimated 140,000 cases of respiratory ailments in children over a decade.

It estimates that proposals to not require rebuilt trucks to meet emission standards could lead to as many as 41,000 premature deaths per decade and 900,000 cases of respiratory ailments.

Changes in government water quality regulations that incorporate streams and wetlands into the Clean Water Act to guard against pollution could threaten the water supply for approximately 117 million U.S. residents, the article estimates.

The article also states that while proposed changes may aim to benefit those working in fossil fuel industries like coal, it is technology and not environmental regulations that have resulted in workforce reductions.

The changes, the article adds, will negatively impact what has been a growing industry in the U.S. - wind and solar driven sources of power.

A number of states, including Massachusetts, have filed lawsuits against the EPA's proposed rollbacks of regulatory legislation.